In this fast and increasingly connected world, people require information on demand. People do not want to wait until they get home to watch the news on the television or to listen to the radio to get the news. People want the information brought to them now, in real-time.
The same can be said for information that is location sensitive, people want to know what services are available to them in their current physical location. By services it is meant restaurants, cinemas, sporting events, art galleries, fuel supplies and the like. Location sensitive services are also referred to as location based services and are available to a user of a wireless device from a service provider.
Location based services operate on the principle of geographical triggers. A geographical trigger could be the name of a street, the name of a town, a postcode or the position of a vehicle. The location based information can be used to provide information to a user on what is available to them at their current location, such as, for example, ‘where is my nearest Italian restaurant?’ or ‘where is my nearest theater and what time is a particular show starting?’
A user can use a plurality of means for obtaining location based services. One example is using a website to enter the name of the town where the user is physically located along with a search criterion of the services that they are looking for. In this instance the name of the town will form the geographical trigger, but this method requires a user to know where they are or where they want to be.
Another example is ‘what if a person does not know where they are?’ this example the user can use their wireless device to ask the question ‘where am I?’ and ‘what is available where I am?’. In most wireless devices it has become feasible to include a position location function. One such location position function can be found by logging onto a Wireless Application Providers (WAP) website where it is possible to use a function called ‘where am I?’ (an example is of this is a product known as ®VIZZANI). VIZZANI is provided by and is a registered trademark of Vizzavi Europe Limited and Vizzavi UK Limited.
Using the function provided by VIZZAVI the location position function returns the address of the current location of the wireless device and this information is used as an input as a starting destination for directions to another destination.
The location positioning function can be based on Observed Time Difference (ODT), Timimg Advance (TA) data, Time of Arrival or more commonly the Global Positioning System (GPS).
GPS works on the principle of trilateration which locates four or more satellites out of a constellation of 24 earth orbiting satellites and calculates the distance between the four or more satellites to work out where a person is located. A drawback with using GPS is that it is expensive and as of yet not widely implemented in everyday devices.
Hence, location based services are based around an individual's current physical location and what is located at that location. For example a location based service may be one that provides a user with information about what restaurants are available in their current physical location.
A problem occurs when a user of a wireless device would like information that is relevant to a second user's physical location; for example, if a user of a wireless device wants to contact another user of a wireless device who is located in a foreign country, but firstly needs to determine the timezone the user is in before making contact. Or a user of a wireless device needs to know whether a particular car dealership is available in the second user's location.
Therefore a method and system is provided for processing at a remote device a request from a wireless device to obtain information on location based services at the physical location of the remote device.